Magnolia trees bloom by the West Wing of the White House Saturday in Washington, D.C. / Associated Press

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A warm front to our south will creep up toward Lake Erie Monday, allowing even warmer temperatures to filter into the Mansfield area over the next few days.

At least that’s the forecast. This frontal boundary is expected to linger over our area through Thursday, sometimes to our north, often to our south, so precisely where our temperatures will be at any given time isn’t the easiest call.

But after high temperatures in the mid-60s Monday, we should see 70s again for Tuesday and Wednesday (Mansfield recorded a high temp of 73 degrees on Sunday, the warmest reading since before the winter months).

This boundary will also be the focus for some showers and storms, which will also be challenging to pin down. As of Monday morning, most of the precipitation was well to our north and west, where it will probably remain for most of the day. But chances of thunder do increase here after 2 p.m.

Once this stationary front is finally blown out of here, we’re looking at cold weather again, with high temperatures only in the mid-40s for Thursday and Friday. But the cold won’t last. I saw plants poking up out of the ground Sunday that weren’t there on Saturday. Our landscape is on the verge of greening up in a big way.

In climate news, while the globe is still warming – the 10 hottest years on record have all been since 1998 – there’s no denying that the pace of the warm-up has slowed since 2000. What gives?

A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change concludes that much of this excess energy is being absorbed by the oceans, the top 2,300 feet of the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans, to be specific.

The Earth’s oceans, of course, are massive, suggesting that this absorption could continue indefinitely. But it could also end tomorrow. Scientists are taking a wait-and-see approach, which is really all anyone can do when it comes to climate change (I don’t hold out much hope for legislative action).

Below are the weather statistics for Sunday, April 7, at my location 4 miles north-northwest of Fredericktown, Ohio: